Time Travelers' Convention 836
usermilk writes "Some folks at MIT are holding a time-travelers' convention. The idea is to make it so famous and so widely-known that even thousands of years in the future, people will still know exactly when and where this time-traveler convention went down, and will all come travel to it at some point in their illustrious time-traveling careers. For those interested in attending, it's on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC) in the East Campus Courtyard at MIT. 42:21:36.025N, 71:05:16.332W (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)."
Ahh... (Score:5, Funny)
But will John Titor be invited?
Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ahh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Striving to represent all sides of an issue is one thing, but those who believe a lame hoax and those who don't, do not two valid sides of an issue make.
I mean, come on: "there are discrepancies between Titor's claims of the future and actual events"? Oh really, cause it all looked pretty solid to
Re:Ahh... (Score:4)
It's really more the attitude in general rather than this silly article that worries me.
I mean, if I claim that I have invisible aliens called Dvutels living in my attic, who only communicate with me, and only telepathically; I have presented exactly as much evidence for my story as the time traveler has, so would wikipedia be obliged to fairly represent my side in this matter?
I can even provide a picture [hemscott.net] of my attic to show that they are invisible. Oh, I can also provide a rich and evocative description of their homeworld and its history, to strengthen my case.
You too? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, it's a rather strange phenomenon. "Fair and balanced" means presenting both sides of a case, even when one side is obviously right (or at least more right), and one side is wrong. The John Titor case is one of those (obviously a very artful hoax). Intelligent Design vs.
Re:Ahh... (Score:3, Funny)
You can call that religion an earn serious cash.
Re: Freedom of speech is a good thing (Score:4, Informative)
This has nothing to do with free speech (or even Free Speech) whatsoever. Free speech guarantees your right to hold and voice an opinion, unmolested by the powers that be. This concept is often warped into the notion that it obviates the need to defend such an opinion, or that merely holding it requires others to recognize it as valid.
Nobody is even remotely pondering curtailing the "Titorites"' rights to self expression. What I have a problem with is that the editors of the particular article, in their treatment of the subject matter are giving far too much credence to this particular crackpot theory. They do this in the laudible pursuit of neutrality, but in this case that leads to a product that reflects negatively on the project as a whole.
Free speech does not mean the abandonment of objective reasoning. Neutral point of view does not mean that wikipedia editors should parrot everything they read on the internet.
Oh and thank you for providing a link to the article on free speech - how deliciously patronizing.
Re:Ahh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ahh... (Score:3, Funny)
My descendents hate me? pshaw. i'll show them. I won't have any. mwa hah ahha haha.
Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Interesting)
I found the John Titor episode very interesting. Many people have characterised him as a hoax, but I think that's unfair. I think it was a very clever piece of Internet performance art, anticipating alternate games like I Love Bees.
My hat is off to the guy. He's made me think a lot about how future generations will judge our current culture, which I think was the main point of the exercise.
It reminds me a bit of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. It was unfair to call that a "hoax" because a hoaxer expects you to believe their bullshit. Chuck Barris was trying to make a point through a clever piece of alternate-reality fiction. Much the same as John Titor, whoever he really was.
Re:Ahh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ahh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hyuk hyuk
I tried to make it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I tried to make it (Score:5, Funny)
Why did they set the date in the future? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Couldn't get hotel rooms at a decent price (Score:3, Funny)
I already went. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why did they set the date in the future? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why did they set the date in the future? (Score:5, Funny)
In a way, you illustrate the REAL problem (Score:5, Interesting)
You know how long a thousand years is? Columbus discovering America is _half_ that time ago.
A thousand years ago, the Vikings were still getting converted to Christianity. Do you know where the big parties have been at this time? If I told you that Bjarni Hrolfsson and Erik Karlsson (made up viking names) had this fabulous party 1000 years ago, would you even know when and where to go?
Heck, would you have even heard about it? History tends to recall more like royal events and wars from that long ago. We know roughly when and where the saxon earl Harold Goodwinson fought the Vikings and we know where he later lost to William of Normandie. But do you know exactly where some vikings or normans from back then had a party? I don't think so.
Roughly a thousand years ago, we had the first crusade. We remember that because it's a bloody big war... went awfully wrong, with a bloody huge PR, but even then a lot of details are missing.
Roughly a thousand years ago, temperatures peaked _higher_ than they are today. In fact so high that Greenland thawed and was green enough to be called that. The Vikings could farm it.
That's a bloody huge event even on history scale, but even the vast majority the global-warming scare gang doesn't know about it. (E.g., that it happened without driving SUVs. Or that no, all that molten ice did _not_ kill all fish life, and did _not_ reverse the gulf stream either.)
Roughly a thousand years ago, Leif Eriksson decided to sail west from Greenland, to check out Bjarni Herjolfsson's story that he's seen land there. And he discovered America. That's a bloody huge event, and even about that we have little more than a saga and some ruins that sorta look like a Viking village. And even that's _one_ of the landfalls that Leif made.
So what makes anyone think that a nerd party would go into every history book for millenia?
No, au contraire (Score:3, Interesting)
In a hundred years, I would expect for us to at least have some sort of storage media that is unaffected by time."
Point well taken, but the summary said _thousands_ of years. In which case, sorry, nope.
Don't forget that a lot of information before had been engraved on metal, carved on wood (which is why runes look the way they look: they were designed for carving into wood), or ins
Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. if a time travel came back in time and altered the past, no one would know but him/her.
2. it is impossible to prove that our recorded history now is the same as it was 1 second ago due to rule number 1.
3. You may be caught in a temporal causality loop, doomed forever to repeat the same period of time over and over.
4. If time is an expression of entropy, then the only way to travel through time is to prefectly reverse entropy, which is impossible because, iirc, entropy is chaotic.
5. If the universe is nonlinear, or rather, linear is an illusion, then there is no past or future to travel to, but only the present wich exists at any instant as a snapshot in the cascade towards greater entropy.
6. The universe is moving towards a state of pure heat, at which time entropy will cease, as all engery, which drives entropy, will have been used. if you intend to travel through time by altering the universe around you, then you can not go past this point, or ever return. if you time travel by using internal independent means, then you may travel past this point, but you would no longer have any external means of measuring the passage of time in the universe. To time travel through external means you must increase the general entropy of the universe such that all events happen faster outside your time machine. to travel through time internaly you must slow down your own entropy. in both instances you must phase away from the universe such that you do not exist in it, lest you collide with something going faster than you can percieve.
7 If time is a seperate dimension then you must find a way to travel in the direction that is forwards or backwards from where you are now. 4 dimensional travel occurs at a steady, measurable rate. As you approach the speed of light, this rate of passage decreases. Thus, it is logical to assume that by exceeding the speed of light in our universe of spacetime you would travel backwards in time.
8. You may be your own great great grandparent.
9. If you change your own past you can not go back to your own future to reap the benifits because the new future would have a new you to match it.
10. Journeyman Project is t3h roxors!!!!!
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Assuming time travel is possible, it's impossible to alter the past.
Think of it this way, the way something happened, is the way it happened. If you travel back in time, then you're participating in events however, your paticipation would already have happened. Therefore, anything you've already done would already have happened.
Think of it this way. You couldn't go back in time and shoot Hilter before he got into power for the very simple reason that it didn't happen. Say you setup a sniper rifle on a building. You could try to fire but you'd either miss, the gun would jam, you'd get arrested, have a heart-attack etc. etc.
This isn't the universe trying to protect itself or any such mystical mumbo jumbo. It's just the simple fact that a thing didn't happen and your actions in trying to change the past are already part of history.
Probably didn't explain it very clearly.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Funny)
Don't you mean Mr Hilter?
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure you meant to say that if you travel back in time to shoot hitler, you could in fact shoot him, just that once you left on your mission to shoot him you could never return to that same place because that place exists in a relative path from a place where hitler was not shot.
Of course if you could transcend time and thus travel freely thru the infinite possible dimensions, why would you want to go and shoot hitler.. the dimension in which you shoot hitle
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Funny)
Are you a time traveller? Didn't think so. I am, in fact, a time traveller. What happens once you leave this dimension to travel to another one
12 Monkeys (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you sure? If quantum mechanics are involved in any meaningful way, then some of the events may be literally random (i.e. not a function of any observable input). In that case, even perfect knowledge of the inputs and the wiring would be insufficient.
Easier way is, "Time is an illusion" (Score:5, Insightful)
Or this... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Easier way is, "Time is an illusion" (Score:3, Interesting)
So, what is time? Well, it first started out as a way for man to determine when to plant crops. It later was used by man for navigation & transport, at a time where different villages were on different time zones (sundials). Now we measure it by counting the vibrations of an atom. The key thing is that man was present at each step. We feel so confident about it, we have even created a "Univ
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
But what you could do is slip into an alternate universe which is exactly like ours, only 60 years behind. Once there you could kill Hitler and alter History... but only in THAT copy of the Universe.
While useless to alter history, I do find the technique works well for obtaining quality building materials, and collectables for my Ebay super-store.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, almost like it's impossible for objects heavier than air to fly
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Informative)
They don't. Tachyons were a weirdness created by some of the early attempts at String Theory. Later work at correcting the mathematical holes in the theory eliminated the possibility of tachyons.
References (Score:3, Funny)
Where are referenced Universe instances when you need them?
Re:TT is possible (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no; you got it all wrong. It was just exactly because someone went back and shot that Hilter you speak of; that the much worse dictator Hitler we do remember could come to power.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
We speak of "time" because it's convenient. It allows us to measure our lives and our activities against a single background. We keep track of "time" by observing the predictable patterns of celestial objects, as well as by setting mechanical devices to synchronize with those celestial movement cycles.
But what exactly is "time"? Time is a series of events. Nothing more. You can't undo things in real life. A broken vase can't be put back together just by reversing the event that caused it to break. Why? Because events are irreversible. You can cause a negating event for some things (like turning a light on or off), but you can never undo an event once it's done.
So, simply put, time doesn't exist. It's merely perception of a series of events. The fact that it's perception is made clear by the phrase "time flies when you're having fun." Your brain records images of events into your memory, sometimes with a record of celestial body locations or numeric representations thereof.
The more interested you are in what is happening around you, the more things your brain will record. But having limited processing resources, it will skip the "timestamp" on many of those events. The relative difference between each "timestamp" is much farther apart than is expected or normal, so "time flies."
When you're disinterested in events around you, the opposite is true. Your brain records some meaningless drivel and since it has lots of resources available, it slaps a "timestamp" on every one of those mental notes. Boring stuff seems to take much longer because of this.
Let's see the writers for the next Star Trek series (several years from now, I hear) put this tidbit of time-travel logic to work. It'll at least spare us some crappy re-hashes of Nazis in space (spaaaaaaaaaaaace?).
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of it this way, the way something happened, is the way it happened.
Buddy, I've got a cat in a box that would or would not beg to disagree.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, here's the tricky part: what if I decide not to go in the past and me going into the past is part of history? That would change history and oh I've gone crosseyed.
Since I'm not a big fan of predetermined fate, I must assume that no one may go in the past of their own dimension. The two seem to go hand-in-hand as far as I see.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)
So let me get this straight. You have never met your great great grandma, but the pictures of her in her younger years show that she was one hot babe. You decide to go back in time and do her?
If he hadn't... (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, he went back in time. Pervert.
Re:Hmmm.... (Score:3, Funny)
Hm (Score:5, Funny)
gets the imagination going (Score:5, Funny)
Re:gets the imagination going (Score:4, Funny)
I was there (Score:3, Funny)
RSVP? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I'm sure I'll get around to it one of these days.
so naturally (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so naturally (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe spandex is all the rage in 3166.
Re:so naturally (Score:3, Funny)
Queue Red Dwarf... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:so naturally (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so naturally (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so naturally (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, you mean like a Slashdot meetup?
Paradoxes (Score:5, Insightful)
If no time travellers turn up on May 7th, will everyone stop promoting it after the date?
Personally I would have thought it'd make sense to give a bit more advanced notice than a week, if only to give people a chance to get the word around more beforehand (thus more likely to be archived).
Re:Paradoxes (Score:3, Funny)
No, it will be continually duped on slashdot until a time machine is invented. That way no one will ever forget about it, and the editors have an excuse for the dupe. MIT probably planned it this way becuase they knew slashdot would carry it for the next 50,000 years.
Fuck (Score:5, Funny)
Hold on, I have to go get this Erik kid married to his one true love.
Oh boy.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
If you came from the future.. (Score:4, Funny)
It could be a ruse... (Score:5, Funny)
I went there next year. (Score:5, Funny)
marketing idea (Score:5, Funny)
- Legit costumes for whatever era. WW2 uniform, peasant outfit, etc
- Monetary exchange: buy/sell money from different eras, at varying rates. You will always need money(depending on the time)
- Fake IDs. Going back 20 years? get an ID 20 years prior to your birthday
- Fake license plates. Travelling in an old car back to an earlier time? Get "legit" license plates that are either from the same car, or just some convincing out-of-state plates.
WARNING: Management is not responsible to disruptions in history.
The sales possibilities are endless.
zerg (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:zerg (Score:3, Funny)
Thankfully, with Windows 64-bit edition coming out, we have adaquate memory addressing capabilties to model all of these possibilities.
Re:zerg (Score:5, Informative)
-- Reaching the exact coordinates at the right instant, considering rotation and revolution of the planet, solar system, and galaxy.
-- Matching the velocity of that location (and timeframe) exactly.
It's not only useless to appear at the right instant in the right room if your body doesn't exactly match the inertial frame -- it would be fatal. Forgetting to account for just the earth's revolution around the sun would slam the traveller against the wall at 30km/sec.
Re:zerg (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no absolute coordinate to dial into...it's a meaningless concept.
This is a severe pr
Not true... (Score:3, Informative)
The wall slams into the traveller.
Re:zerg (Score:4, Funny)
Even if someone time travelled into the past for a few seconds, wouldn't they wind up in the icy cold of space while the planet speeds along on its normal course around
Nah, because the rotation of the solar system around the galactic core, combined with the movement of the Milky Way (propelled out by the big bang, and pulled on by the gravity of various neighbouring galaxies) just happen to exactly cancel out the movement of the earth. This means that we are, in fact, absolutely fixed in position in space.
This is why the aliens keep coming here --- we are the only stable point in the universe where time travel can (safely) happen.
HTH.
Re:zerg (Score:3, Funny)
Duh.
Not Bloody Likely (Score:5, Funny)
Larry Niven Already Dealt With This (Score:5, Insightful)
Asimov Worked That Out Before Niven Did (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, like the government won't be watching THAT (Score:5, Insightful)
Or if you're the big-business conspiracy theory type, substitute "government" for "private mercenaries."
Re:Yeah, like the government won't be watching THA (Score:3, Interesting)
The correct tense might be "The government troops didn't show up, so it's safe to go."
It is just me? (Score:3, Interesting)
So let's say you have yourself an Acme Time Machine, and it works. So you set it to transport you back in time 24 hours. Has no one ever considered that the earth has moved? Assuming for the moment that time travel is possible, if you do not calculate precisely where the earth is, and the location you want to go to, then you will most likely end up in space, but with a nasty possibility of "arriving" inside the earth (or possibly even the sun or some other body).
A time machine would have to also be an instantaneous space travel machine, capable of transporting you anywhere in the universe. I mean, if you can magically transport yourself the 17,640 mi (28,224 km) the earth will have moved in 24 hours, then whatever principle it uses will probably transport you over much greater distances.
One fear... (Score:5, Funny)
Telefrags.
Conference review (Score:3, Funny)
It certainly doesn't compare with the twin millennium celebrations on December 31, 999 and 1000, where the hostesses pull out all the stops to outdo one another. Now, those are parties!
YOU ARE ALL STUPID UNEDUCATED IDIOTS (Score:3, Funny)
Cubic time is proven fact and cannot be disputed. Nature's simultaneous 4-day cube proves that there are four parts to a day, and four days occuring always at the four corners of earth. 2x2=4, and people who insist in time as something that can be traveled think of THREE parts, past present and future, but there are in actuality FOUR parts, fact which is ignored by antiHarmony academia criminals. Time "theories" from people educated moronic in evil institutions are ignorant of the four corners of the time and of the world. Denying the existence of four-sided nature of time and universe is to ensure your own demise. You are stupid arrogant curse to all creatures of the planet.
/obligatory
Re:The Convention (Score:5, Funny)
I believe you mean willan on-be a blast.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Let me hop in my delorean and I'll be there in 5 minutes ago.
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
So, as a countermeasure, we formed a "Time Travellers Club". We put out notices in everyone's boxes, first notifying people of an upcoming meeting a week prior, and the second time thanking everyone for such a large turnout at our meeting a week later. We got permission to post our own sign - a big hanging one that ha our group name, and its motto ("I'll See You Yesterday!").
Later, we found the notices on at least one RA's and one student's door - the student had apparently actually tried to go to the meeting that we thanked people for the turnout at, because they had it next to a note that said "I went, and it sucked!"
Re:so theoretically (Score:5, Funny)
Re:so theoretically (Score:5, Funny)
As someone who frequents these types of parties I can tell you they never go bad. Whats so bad about a bunch of engineers having huge drunken bonanza?
"Dude, why is your volumetric spirit flow rate decreasing exponentially as a function of time while your volumetric elimination flow rate increasing as a logarithmic function of time?"
Yeah, those types of parties.
Re:Why this ain't gonna fly (Score:4, Funny)
I used this funny hispanic name, Jesus...
It's actually greek... (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, if you want good alternate history regarding Jesus - I highly recommend Chrisopher Moore's "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal".
Re:Why this ain't gonna fly (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's assume for the sake of argument, that this convention is discovered in a historylibrary of some sort (archives of
When he does, he'll instantly split the timeline, and the one he came from will become a parallel universe to the one he's in when he attends the convention.
Why? Because in order for a time traveler to notice it in the future, it will have to happen at least once without him. Ergo, if I were to go to this meeting, I would not meet a time traveler, because this is "my" timeline.
However, if this were to happen, an alternate version of me would be able to meet the time traveler, because he came back in time, after having lived later in "my" timeline, where the convention took place without a visitor from the future.
In fact, the moment he interacts with anything or anyone from our timeline when he arrives, is when the timeline splits, because he wasn't there the first time around. So unless he's already here in our timeline, which would make me the alternate version of me, then I won't meet him.
It's more than likely nobody from the future will show up at the convention. Unless, like I said, we're already in the alternate timeline.
Also, when he goes back to the future, his timeline will have been altered and he may not even exist in the timeline he returns to; and he will have no way to get back to his own previous future timeline, unless he goes back again a little earlier and tells his alternate self to go back immediately without going to the convention - which of course would create a grandfather paradox, as he would then have no reason to tell himself not to go and the entire universe would simply cease to exist.
Is that clear?
Re:Why this ain't gonna fly (Score:3, Insightful)
Sort of a multi line/track switch theory you have for your explanation.
Now try and work it with single-line editing allowed and still explain away the 'paradox' that implies, for extra credit give two paradox solvers.
Time Travel is one of the more fun things to consider.
Wish I could remember if anyone fun showed up at this one.
Mycroft
Re:Why this ain't gonna fly (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why this ain't gonna fly (Score:3, Funny)
Most likely (Score:4, Interesting)
For any given initial velocity, there would only be certain periodic times when you *wouldn't* end up inside the planet. And the position on the planet where you come out would also be problematic. If you're not satisfied with those precise times and places, then you can adjust your velocity a tad, to get another set of options.
If you're in orbit then you have much less to worry about.